Complex interactive graphical designs require collaboration among numerous professionals with wide ranging skill sets. As the complexity of these designs increase, the number of stakeholders involved in the design increases along with the level of specialization they each exhibit. It is therefore of increasing importance for design tools to facilitate a liquid and frictionless flow of information between each member of the collaborative team so that each stakeholder can apply their skills to the design process while the team remains focused on a common understanding of what the final design will be.
Along with diverging specialties, teams expect to be provided with an environment for fluid collaboration even when the team members are located in diverse geographical locations. Design tools currently approach this problem by providing stakeholders with the ability to add notes to a design for later review by other members of the team. For example, a project manager can instruct a graphical design professional on the team to modify the appearance of an image they produced while a graphical designer can instruct an interface specialist to make the image appear in a light box when a button in the design is selected. The graphical designer and interface specialist could then each enter the design at a later time, read the content of the notes, and edit the design as instructed.
Design tools have previously facilitated collaboration through various approaches. Simple graphical designs tools, such as those used for producing text documents, can allow for collaboration through the introduction of comments and specialized notation systems for tracking changes. More complex design tools, such as those used to edit the design of a web site, allow for collaboration through the use of a comment pane that can appear along the side of a web page as it is being rendered in a browser. The comment pane allows multiple users to communicate textually regarding the design. For example, one user may view the design and add a comment on one aspect of the design which is then read by a second user.
An example of a collaborative tool for commenting on an interactive graphical design in the specific context of a website design can be described with reference to web browser screen 100 in FIG. 1. The web browser illustrated in FIG. 1 is serving as a player to provide a rendering of the design in design interaction interface 101. This particular browser includes a note interface 102 with a note display interface 103 and an add note interface 104. In this tool, a particular stakeholder in the design is able to add “pins” to the design such as pin 105 by clicking on button 106 in the add note interface 104. The stakeholder can then click on a portion of the page to add the pin to the rendering of the design and then enter a note in note display interface 103 that is associated with the pin. In the illustrated example, a security expert stakeholder has added a pin to the design in order to express her interest in modifying the password field so the password does not show up as the user enters it. Another stakeholder in the design, for example a software developer, can view the comment provided by the security expert and act on the comment at a later time. In this manner, an environment for collaborative design efforts between the stakeholders is provided.